Note though that, contrary to the DPReview headline, the market share leader in mirrorless system cameras is Olympus at 27.7%, ahead of Canon at 21.3% which edges Sony into third place at 20.2% How Sony's third became "tops" in the DPReview headline is a mystery. Maybe by the unstated restriction to 36x24mm format! That comes to mind because there are several assertions in this thread that are false as stated, but become true if you ignore the far greater part of the ILC market that involves smaller formats.

BTW, it is not clear to me one way or the other whether Sony's "first mover" advantage in 36x24mm format mirrorless systems will be enough to guarantee that Nikon will forever trail Sony in that sector, let alone whether Sony will stay ahead of Canon if/when it enters that segment: consider how Canon's EOS-M mirrorless system with only a handful of dedicated EF-M lenses available has taken the lead over the Sony and Fujifilm in "APS-C" format mirrorless systems that were on the market earlier and (to me at least) are clearly more impressive. Factors like overall brand strength and the attraction of using same-brand SLR lenses with same-brand adaptors can favor the overall ILC leaders, Canon and Nikon.

1. USA market vs Japan market2. Full-frame vs overall - no doubt Olympus, Canon and Fuji sell a lot of crop-body cameras, but these tend to be low-margin products whose users often only buy one or two lenses, rather than a whole collection.3. Absolute numbers vs percentage growth. Sony has nowhere to go but up, so their percentage growth is always going to be high, but that says nothing about absolute numbers. Canon and Nikon have more or less reached a steady equilibrium, where it's mostly users of older full-frame bodies replacing their systems, with a slow leakage of users replacing Canon/Nikon SLRs with Sony mirrorless bodies or Fuji medium format bodies (a leakage which may be arrested by Canon/Nikon mirrorless bodies, depending on their performance). In terms of absolutenumbers, it does say that around 40% of full-frame body sales this year have been of Sony bodies, but this may be misleading, owing to too short a time scale (more on that later)

Sources are at the bottom of the link - NPD group market research provided most of them, so it's not coming from Sony itself.

Three-year rolling average would be more useful than year-to-year change, though, due to camera release cycles and the effect of new releases - sales figures are likely to be 'spiky' rather than smooth, with upward 'spikes' every time a new body is released (and actually available in stores). No doubt the Jan-Jun 2018 figures would have been heavily padded by the A7r3 release in late 2017 (the A9 only came out towards the end of the corresponding period in 2017).

The line stating, 'Four out of every 10 full-frame cameras sold during this time period have come from the Sony brand' (referring to the first half of 2018) is interesting. This came soon after the release of the A7r3, while the A7III was released during that timeframe. New releases tend to produce a flurry of sales in the first year (possibly not immediately, due to lack of availability of bodies), with demand then tapering off. Nikon's D850 was Sony's only real competitor during that period, being released two months before the A7r3 and only really becoming widely available at the start of 2018. Canon hasn't released a higher-end full-frame body since 2016, with only the low-profile 6D2 coming in July 2017 (six months before the start of the period in question). All other full-frame cameras would have more or less returned to a 'baseline' sales rate. Basically, the 6-month period is far too short a period to view changes in market share. Even the year-on-year figures provided for 2016-2017 are too short a period. You really need a three- or four-year rolling average to see changes in the market between brands, in order to take into account camera release cycles.

Note though that, contrary to the DPReview headline, the market share leader in mirrorless system cameras is Olympus at 27.7%, ahead of Canon at 21.3% which edges Sony into third place at 20.2% How Sony's third became "tops" in the DPReview headline is a mystery. Maybe by the unstated restriction to 36x24mm format! That comes to mind because there are several assertions in this thread that are false as stated, but become true if you ignore the far greater part of the ILC market that involves smaller formats.

BTW, it is not clear to me one way or the other whether Sony's "first mover" advantage in 36x24mm format mirrorless systems will be enough to guarantee that Nikon will forever trail Sony in that sector, let alone whether Sony will stay ahead of Canon if/when it enters that segment: consider how Canon's EOS-M mirrorless system with only a handful of dedicated EF-M lenses available has taken the lead over the Sony and Fujifilm in "APS-C" format mirrorless systems that were on the market earlier and (to me at least) are clearly more impressive. Factors like overall brand strength and the attraction of using same-brand SLR lenses with same-brand adaptors can favor the overall ILC leaders, Canon and Nikon.

The way they worded the headline is a bit awkward but if you isolate it's clear they meant Canon "beats" Sony .. ie"Canon dominates DSLRs, (and) tops Sony in mirrorless.

This is another tidbit. I looked for the numbers and could not find them ...

"Sony Takes Over As No.1 In U.S. Full-frame Cameras""As DSLRs fade into the history books of photography, Sony has emerged as the official leader in full-frame cameras in the US. Newly-released NPD data shows the remarkable growth Sony has achieved through a combination of innovative next-generation mirrorless cameras and a thriving community of active creators who are reimagining what photography and videography can be. "

The way they worded the headline is a bit awkward but if you isolate it's clear they meant Canon "beats" Sony .. ie"Canon dominates DSLRs, (and) tops Sony in mirrorless.

This is another tidbit. I looked for the numbers and could not find them ...

"Sony Takes Over As No.1 In U.S. Full-frame Cameras""As DSLRs fade into the history books of photography, Sony has emerged as the official leader in full-frame cameras in the US. Newly-released NPD data shows the remarkable growth Sony has achieved through a combination of innovative next-generation mirrorless cameras and a thriving community of active creators who are reimagining what photography and videography can be. "

As I mentioned, different market, and full-frame only. The sources are listed at the bottom - they come from a market research firm, not from Sony's own bragging.

The Canon vs Sony contest is shaping up to be a very interesting one, and it may have less to do with camera body technology than lens technology.

Very broadly, you can divide the (better-than-phone-camera) market into three groups - performance-seeking, price-limited and size/weight-limited. Obviously, there is overlap - you can be a performance-seeker, but be price- or size-limited away from medium format, for instance, but, broadly speaking, any piece of equipment will be more or less attractive to each group based on its characteristics.

Camera forums and high-end users tend to represent the 'performance-seeking' group. This is where the A7r3, D850, D5, fast supertele lenses, super-sharp f/1.4 and faster primes, not to mention medium format, belong - a zone where price represents little object and customers are willing to carry big, heavy lenses and backpacks full of gear to get the best possible shots. Canon and Sony are both highly competitive in this field. Right now, Sony probably has the advantage, since they have an established full-frame body lineup that improves markedly with each generation and a rapidly-expanding lens lineup, while Canon is still rooted in old SLR technology and needs to get its full-frame mirrorless system off the ground; this is not irreversible, though, since Canon is a large company with more than enough resources to chase and catch up, much as Sony did when it went from being mainly an electronics company to competing with Canon and Nikon for the camera market.

But it is with the other two groups, representing a far bigger market, that Canon may have an upper hand in the medium term - and it largely comes down to their lens technology, not their sensor or body technology.

Canon has invested a lot of effort into developing diffraction optics and other beyond-classical optics. This allows lenses to be made smaller, lighter and cheaper (once mass production and economies of scale come into it) than non-DO lenses. Initially, there was a performance deficit, with the 'onion ring' bokeh in early-generation DO lenses, but improved manufacturing techniques for more precise optical surfaces, particularly on the nano-scale (similar to what Sony initially advertised in its G Master series), has largely mitigated this, and continues to improve. When used, it allows Canon to make a smaller lens with the same optical characteristics (focal length, aperture and image circle), or a lens of the same size with wider aperture, longer focal length or covering a larger image circle.

It wasn't so long ago that Canon said that, in a few years' time, we'd have compact zoom lenses with a 10-1000mm focal length range. They didn't mean that this would happen using ordinary optics. What Canon's developments would allow is things such as a full-frame mirrorless camera, the size of a Leica M-series, with a range of small, compact zoom and prime lenses stretching from 16mm f/4 to 200/4 and beyond - essentially, a full-frame Olympus E-series M43 camera with much greater capability. A lot of people - particularly the travelling crowd - aren't willing to lug a D850 or A7r3 with 10kg of lenses around, but are more than happy to bring an Olympus E-series with two or three small lenses. Canon could one-up them, delivering much more capability in a package of the same size. Or, for the more budget-minded, optical developments would allow for a 1.6x crop camera with a 10-1000mm lens (angle of view similar to 16-1600mm on full-frame) in a relatively compact package, delivering similar utility to Nikon's P900, but with much better image quality (particularly in low light) due to the much larger sensor.

Sony has its RX series bodies, as well as a number of pancake-type lenses. But, without new optics - diffraction optics, optical metameterials, electroactive optical materials, etc. - they can't go much further than this. Sure, they can continually improve sensors and electronics, as they will always do, but they won't be able to make significantly faster or longer lenses without running into physical size or cost limits, let alone come close to matching the effective reach of 'compact' (to use the term loosely) cameras such as Nikon's P900 and P1000, whose 24-2000mm or 24-3000mm equivalent angles of view really provide the imprimatur for their existence (their 1/2.3" sensors being otherwise low-end even by compact camera standards).

It goes further than this. Canon is both an electronics company, capable of producing its own sensors, and an optics company, while Sony is primarily an electronics company, which has only recently started to make forays into optics, since acquiring Minolta. There is no reason Canon can't make a play for the lucrative phone market, so far dominated by Sony, by producing combined sensor-optics packages containing either a standard-sized sensor with a more capable lens, or a bigger and better sensor with a lens covering the same angle of view, in the same size and price range as current phone camera packages. Or the drone camera market, with a large (1.5x/1.6x crop or even full-frame) sensor and lens in the same durable, lightweight package and price range as current small-sensor offerings. You couldn't do either with classical optics - you'd run into size and/or cost limits. But new developments in optics allow capabilities which would previously have required many large, heavy glass elements to be constructed using far fewer, lighter elements, in a smaller overall package. And this is where Canon has a huge lead over Sony, and could potentially capitalise on it, particularly outside of the 'performance-over-all-else' subset of cameras.

To compete with this, Sony would do well to pick up some more optics capability. Sigma, perhaps, or even Nikon. Maybe, somewhere in Sony's boardrooms, some committee has a hidden goal of trying to cripple Nikon financially, while retaining their technical expertise, making them ripe for a takeover (Sony could buy out Nikon now, but it would cost them a lot). Canon would be able to buy them out too, but would have far less reason to; essentially, their only reason to do so would be to keep them out of Sony's hands, and, given the relative sizes of Canon and Sony, a bidding war could cripple both of them.

Right... does the scenario still apply if Canon doesn't announce a FF mirrorless on Sept 4th?

Doesn't matter whether they announce it on September 4, two months later, or two years down the line. The underlying technologies remain, and the same groups of customers are still there. Budget-minded and casual users, in particular, can easily change systems with each generation, since they aren't beholden to a large collection of lenses. Same with any camera bodies using non-interchangeable lenses.

I take a longer view on things. Looking at their strategic direction over the last ten years, so does Canon. And, given their jump into mirrorless when it was still an underperforming, immature technology, in a world dominated by SLRs, so did Sony. Not to mention their purchase of Minolta, which took 11 years to really bear fruit for them.

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Is the performance of this fantasy camera and its lenses going to play any role at all? Or is the Canon logo enough to support your views of the world?

The performance barely matters, so long as it hits a certain minimum standard. And both Canon and Sony are capable of hitting that standard (as are Nikon, Olympus, Fuji and a few others).

As long as basic functionality is there and performance is in the same ballpark (by 'same ballpark' I mean 'focuses where you point it' and 'sharp enough', not 'has 1.5 stops extra DR at base ISO' or 'has 5% extra tracking accuracy when shooting a cheetah sprinting in long grass at sunrise'), it's the other things that determine success - size and weight, price, zoom range, ruggedness, even colour scheme. These cameras aren't aimed at high-end users - put simply, you're not the target audience here. They want a camera that delivers better image quality than a phone, doesn't cost as much as a small car and is small and unobtrusive enough to take anywhere they might want to take photos (particularly travel and holidays). And that standard isn't hard to hit. Beyond that, it's all about 'what can it do' rather than 'can it do X really, really well' - think wide-angle capability, macro capability, ultra-long focal lengths, low-light capability, ability to be used underwater, image stabilisation, etc., rather than MTF charts or small amounts of DR.

And these technologies add to the performance. If you're working with a size and weight limit, diffractive optics lets you put a longer lens, faster lens and larger sensor into a package of the same size. Irrelevant if you're just after the best performance possible, but very relevant if you have a size/weight/price limit. The budget/size-limited camera market is many times larger than the high-end market, not to mention the phone camera market. Canon's and Sony's goal is to make as much money as possible, not to make the best possible camera for you.

Also, it's not a 'fantasy camera'. The technologies are experimental, have been prototyped, have patents and are in continual development - big difference. It may just exist in the lab at the moment, but can be brought to the forefront when the conditions are right (usually other needed technologies or manufacturing capabilities). In other words, not too different from mirrorless cameras 10 years ago, or CMOS 20 years ago.

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Is Nikon going to still sell a few Z of are they going to be shortcutted to fanboy bankruptcy in the coming days without getting the chance?

They probably will - mostly to those who are already shooting Nikon. Winning new users will be an uphill battle, unless they specifically go for the Leica/Hasselblad luxury crowd (which is a very small market even in comparison to the full-frame market).

But how many they sell, and how good the camera is, is almost irrelevant in the long run. You can win every battle and still lose the war. Betamax was better than VHS. Strategically, Nikon is hemmed in at the bottom end. They can't compete at the low-margin budget end, since they don't make their own sensors and must buy them at whatever cost the fab plants decide to sell them for; at best, this leaves them competing with Olympus, Panasonic, Fujifilm and the like, who all buy their sensors from the same few sources, while, at worst, Canon and/or Sony could decide to really dominate the lower end and just undercut all of them with their own manufactured sensors. This forces them into the higher-end range, which has higher margins, but is a much smaller market in absolute terms. And even here, in the mirrorless market (where they do not enjoy fifty years of pedigree and F-mount lens collections), they risk being crowded out by Canon and Sony, pushing them into the even higher-priced luxury market, which has high profit margins but low volumes and where the Nikon name doesn't carry the same cachet as names like Leica and Hasselblad. Until they can either make their own sensors, or sensors become so cheap that they become an insignificant part of the cost of even a budget camera, or they pull out of the camera market entirely and become an optics company, Nikon are essentially at the mercy of their suppliers, living in small niches where the bigger companies don't find it worthwhile to compete, but unable to dislodge the big two from contested ground.

Some comments on these two different sets of sales stats:1) Sonyís is for only a half year; one in which it launched a new model and another the previous October, whereas Nikonís latest release was July 2017 and Canonís was June 2017. BCN instead is full year data.

2) BCN has a link for previous years back to 2011, and some trends are clear:- Olympus and/or Panasonic on top most years; moreso if you aggregate MFT.- Sony a bit of a downward trend since its great 2015- Canon trending up since at least 2015- Panasonic trending down (maybe due to its shift to lower volume higher end video-oriented models)- Olympus flat the last two years; a bit down on share compared to the pre-Canon era.- Even the annual aggregates have some big jumps up and down, suggesting volatility related to the release of a single popular model or new technology

3) Japan vs USA indeed. Given that Japan is far ahead of the USA in mirrorless adoption, itís sales data might be a better ďleading indicatorĒ

Some comments on these two different sets of sales stats:1) Sonyís is for only a half year; one in which it launched a new model and another the previous October, whereas Nikonís latest release was July 2017 and Canonís was June 2017. BCN instead is full year data.

2) BCN has a link for previous years back to 2011, and some trends are clear:- Olympus and/or Panasonic on top most years; moreso if you aggregate MFT.- Sony a bit of a downward trend since its great 2015- Canon trending up since at least 2015- Panasonic trending down (maybe due to its shift to lower volume higher end video-oriented models)- Olympus flat the last two years; a bit down on share compared to the pre-Canon era.- Even the annual aggregates have some big jumps up and down, suggesting volatility related to the release of a single popular model or new technology

3) Japan vs USA indeed. Given that Japan is far ahead of the USA in mirrorless adoption, itís sales data might be a better ďleading indicatorĒ

Given that the Sony full frame mirror less cameras were released less than 5 years ago, it's a hell of an accomplishment to outsell the two big guns in the largest camera market which just happens to also be the slowest to adapt to mirror less cameras in general.

Also given that BCN looks at the Japanese market which typically want smaller crop cameras, it's no surprise that Sony full frame cameras don't sell as well in that market.

Sony has stated a few years ago they are focusing on the high end ( meaning high margin ) market where the phone cameras do not compete.

Sony has stated a few years ago they are focusing on the high end ( meaning high margin ) market where the phone cameras do not compete.

Are you suggesting that phone-cameras in any significant way compete with the mainstream format mirrorless camera formats, MFT or APS-C? Maybe I get a hint from the use of the misleading anachronism ďcropĒ; none of these mirrorless systems rely on forcing a crop on a lens system designed for 35mm film format; at most that slightly applies to APS-C format DSLRs for which format-specific lens development is stalled.

Are you suggesting that phone-cameras in any significant way compete with the mainstream format mirrorless camera formats, MFT or APS-C? Maybe I get a hint from the use of the misleading anachronism ďcropĒ; none of these mirrorless systems rely on forcing a crop on a lens system designed for 35mm film format; at most that slightly applies to APS-C format DSLRs for which format-specific lens development is stalled.

Yes I am suggesting that the lower end of all cameras including mirror less is being hurt by phone cameras. Looking at the latest report from Olympus shows their mirror less sales have declined by 11% in the 1st quarter this year compared to last...and their future forecast indicates yet further declines. High end cameras are much more isolated from the phone cameras as they serve a different niche.

Can I just say that Nikon is rubbish and have never made a decent camera in the history of forever and Sony is brilliant and better than anyone else at making cameras and make the best cameras and Nikon will never make one as good as a Sony and ... oh, wait. Someone's already said it. I suppose I might as well just wander off and grow up :-(

Can I just say that Nikon is rubbish and have never made a decent camera in the history of forever and Sony is brilliant and better than anyone else at making cameras and make the best cameras and Nikon will never make one as good as a Sony and ... oh, wait. Someone's already said it. I suppose I might as well just wander off and grow up :-(

Not that fast... you...- have to write it at least 30 times- add Canon to the mix- double check that your post indeed lack any degree of objectivity- triple check that you are still aligned with all the perfect fanboy guidelines- make sure you have exhausted the will of all posters interested in discussing the original subject matter...

Some comments on these two different sets of sales stats:1) Sonyís is for only a half year; one in which it launched a new model and another the previous October, whereas Nikonís latest release was July 2017 and Canonís was June 2017. BCN instead is full year data.

Well, the D850 wasn't actually released until September (despite its July announcement) and wasn't widely available in stores until early 2018. The A7r3 was widely available from November.

Regardless, it is the A7III that really skews the data and just illustrates why 6 month or 1 year periods are too short to see any sort of a long-term trend in camera markets.

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2) BCN has a link for previous years back to 2011, and some trends are clear:- Olympus and/or Panasonic on top most years; moreso if you aggregate MFT.

Only in terms of bodies sold, and only if you look at mirrorless only.

But Olympus and Panasonic only make APS-C bodies. They sell them hard - more so than Canon, Nikon or Sony - and have been in the mirrorless game longer than all but Sony (whose initial NEX came out around the same time but suffered from a deficit in compatible lenses compared with Olympus/Panasonic), so they can be seen as the incumbents in the APS-C mirrorless world, just as Canon is incumbent in SLRs (owing to their early development of CMOS, full frame and video) and Sony in full-frame mirrorless (with their five-year head start over anyone else). But budget APS-C bodies are nowhere near as profitable on a per-unit basis than higher-end bodies - the margins on the bodies are much lower, since the customer base is much more price-sensitive, while they sell fewer, and less expensive, lenses per body, since the average customer is a hobbyist or even a non-photographer who just wants a better-than-phone-camera and two or there small lenses to take on holiday or to social events, rather than an enthusiast or pro with their body weight or more in camera gear.

This does not diminish Olympus and Panasonic ar all - they have clearly been very successful within their defined market segment - but merely means that figures must be put into context. More bodies moved, but much less profit per body, with quoted figures restricted to a market that probably has more non-photographers using better-than-phone cameras than anywhere else (Tokyo teens often been seen with compact or small mirrorless cameras in social settings, while every second domestic traveller seems to have one) and more of an emphasis on small size than most other places.

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- Sony a bit of a downward trend since its great 2015

This is likely a misleading artifact stemming from the release cycle of cameras, and another illustration of why annual figures are too short a period and create too 'noisy' a result compared with three-year rolling averages.

In 2015, Sony releases the A7r2 and A7s2, while the A7II only became available a few days before the year started. That's three big 'spikes' all in the same year. In contrast, 2016 saw nothing, while 2017 saw the A9 (a much smaller customer base, although highly profitable per unit sold, after counting lenses), with the A7r3 coming right at the end, with sales coming mostly in 2018. For that reason (A7r3 and A7IiI) 2018 may show up as another big year for Sony in the charts, although a three-year rolling average is likely to show a steady increase in Sony's market share rather than the cluster of tall spikes you'd see in yearly or six-monthly charts.

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- Canon trending up since at least 2015

In terms of mirrorless cameras, they could hardly have gone lower from where they were. Their gradually-expanding lens choices and steadily-improving dual pixel AF has also made them much more viable in recent years, whereas they would previously have represented a poor choice against M43, despite the larger sensor size. Also, Canon mirrorless bodies seem to be heavily marketed in Japan in a way I haven't seen outside of there, whether here in Australia, in the Middle East or other parts of Asia.

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- Panasonic trending down (maybe due to its shift to lower volume higher end video-oriented models)

Agree.

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- Olympus flat the last two years; a bit down on share compared to the pre-Canon era.

This may be due to market saturation. Anyone who wants a compact M43 body already has one. Olympus' market, at least in Japan, may be starting to reach a steady-state phase mostly driven by replacement of old bodies with new rather than through new customers. Also, Canon is now a more credible compact option than before and has the advantage of larger sensor size while still having small lenses. (Sony not so much - they may have small APS-C bodies, but many compact lenses to go with it.

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- Even the annual aggregates have some big jumps up and down, suggesting volatility related to the release of a single popular model or new technology

Pretty much what I've been saying. We need rolling averages, or the figures to calculate them, not annual or 6-monthly figures.

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3) Japan vs USA indeed. Given that Japan is far ahead of the USA in mirrorless adoption, itís sales data might be a better ďleading indicator

Only in some ways. Japan is far ahead in terms of mirrorless uptake, but also has a far larger proportion of people using better-than-phone cameras. In the west, it tends to be quite binary - either people are using a phone camera, or they're loaded with the biggest and best, with fewer people using in-between options (compact mirrorless and non-interchangeable lens bodies). In Japan (and I've also noticed Hong Kong and Singapore) you see all sorts of people carrying all sorts of cameras, using them in situations where, elsewhere, you'd typically see people pulling out phone cameras instead. So this tends to inflate the lower end of the market.

If the body / EVF are the same across both cameras I would prefer 24MP to 45MP. Unfortunately I also really want D850 color fidelity, ISO 64 and no AA filter.

If Nikon specced a 24MP sensor with D850 response and higher ISO capability id be in heaven. I'd be happy to sacrifice resolution. Unfortunately my basic understanding is that having both high + low ISO performance is a "you cannot have you cake and eat it too" situation.

Unfortunately my basic understanding is that having both high + low ISO performance is a "you cannot have you cake and eat it too" situation.

True. You really have to think about cameras as we used to think about film stocks. The D850 is the Panatomic-X, while the A7s is the Tri-X (higher sensitivity and granier) and the D750 or A73 is the plus-X.

True. You really have to think about cameras as we used to think about film stocks. The D850 is the Panatomic-X, while the A7s is the Tri-X (higher sensitivity and granier) and the D750 or A73 is the plus-X.

Not a perfect analogy, but it is kind of how I think about them.

Thats a good way to think about it actually.

To be honest I don't even mind about the high ISO performance, I'd just like D850 image fidelity (colour, low ISO, no AA) in a lower resolution sensor. It would be nice to save some $$ as well but thats secondary. I travel a lot and do a lot of photoshop work on the road. It would be nice to work on smaller files as beautiful as the 45MP ones.

Over the last 12 months working mostly in fashion and commercial I have not once seen a client worry about megapixels. I see 1 series bodies being used to shoot billboards, 5D3s on countless editorials and various other 18-30MP cameras used all the time. I appreciate some people need the resolution but many of us do not.

True. You really have to think about cameras as we used to think about film stocks. The D850 is the Panatomic-X, while the A7s is the Tri-X (higher sensitivity and granier) and the D750 or A73 is the plus-X.